Bill On His Own

Bill On His Own
OR
The Wasted Effort
OR
A Rose By One Of The Other Names

By Xavier Barker

There was once a little old man named Bill who lived all alone. Bill was a habitually challenged man. In layman’s terms, Bill was a bum. Despite his bereavement of a house he did, however, manage to keep a small circle of friends who lived in more conventional, fire-retardant and weather resistant dwellings. Well, to be fair, it was not quite a circle of friends, more of a line. In actual fact, it was more of a ‘dot’ of ‘friend’ than a ‘circle’ of ‘friends’. This one friend’s name was Mullac. Mullac was not a bum, though he did travel under a vile umbra of repugnant stink that would cause a person to assume he had never enjoyed the pleasures of a simple bar of soap. Bill swore he could see this cloud of malodour sometimes. Bill considered that Mullac was so busy with his studies (Mullac was a student you see) that he had no time to spend frivolously abluting his somewhat oversized person.

Mullac was the smelliest person that God had perversely churned off the creation conveyor belt yet. His presence in a dairy would have curdled all the milk in all the cows and sent the dairy bankrupt as they would have only squeezed fetid yoghurt from the tainted udders. It was not for homelessness that Mullac slept outside his parents’ house, but for his awful, ungodly repugnance. The repulsive funk was so disagreeable that Bill decided to contact his old employees at the National Institute for Research into the Paranormal and Quantum Nature of Malodouressness (NIRP-QuaNaM) and ask for some sort of ectoplasmic-confusion-based cleaning agent to combat the foul cloud circling his only friend.

The Director of External and Body Odours at NIRP-QuaNaM was Dr R.S. Meller, an old chum from the days when Bill contributed to society. After an exchange of pleasantries and obligatory small talk, Dr R.S. Meller inquired into the nature of the reverse charge call the Bill said he was making from his change room (all the while a delightful looking young lass tapped her phone card at the door whilst eyeing Bill loathingly).

The mention of a potentially paranormal funk pricked up the ears of Dr Meller and he fidgeted excitedly in his chair. Only once had a smell like this been heard of, and even then the researchers had perished whilst trying to extract a sample from the creature carrying it. And to think that now a human (supposedly) was harbouring this stink on his very person! The Director was as giddy as a schoolgirl. The fact that Bill had not suffered the same hideous fate as the brave researchers before him was even more amazing – The Director had found the perfect person to extract a sample.

Meller, trying to contain his excitement, almost dismissingly asked Bill to capture a sample of Mullac’s stink. Trying to act nonchalant, the Director said, “Oh, it’s probably nothing. It certainly wouldn’t kill you just by having the most remote contact with it, oh my, no. I’ll do what I can for you, but the cure will probably be nothing more than a good bath, what. Just collect a sample in a hermetically sealed container and drop it ever so carefully in the biohazard deposit box at NIRP-QuaNaM Headquarters. You know the address. Oh, and Bill, if it touches your skin, please don’t bother coming to see me for small change again, just go out to the desert and wait for me there. The centre of the desert. The Sahara. Yes. That’s right. Okay old chum, until then.”

Bill, happy that Mullac’s, and of course his own, problem would soon be over, agreed to deliver a sample of the stink to NIRP-QuaNaM at 8:26 pm that day. As was his daily routine Mullac showed up at the usual rendezvous with a bag of half-rotten and wholly inedible fruit. After Bill had gotten through his share of the decaying fruit, he waited for Mullac to finish his. It must be the alcohol formed by the breakdown of sugars in the fermenting fruit that causes it, but Mullac always feels drowsy after a good meal of rotten fruit. It wasn’t long before Mullac was nodding off on the park bench.

Bill, after slapping Mullac around a bit, went to work on getting a sample of Mullac’s stink. He held aloft his head the ‘Mr.T’ thermos that he had found some years earlier and went about waving it through the awful cloud centralized around Mullac’s body. This technique proved inefficient, so Bill retrieved a pair of tweezers from his trenchcoat pocket and began arduously removing individual stink cells from Mullac’s skin. Bill still marveled at how deftly his hands could work since he cut the fingers of his gloves. It was at times like this that enduring the biting chill of winter seemed worthwhile. After he had collected about a ‘Cuppa Soup’ worth, Bill sealed the flask and sat down to rest. The problem was almost solved.

We all know however, that almost solved is much the same as unsolved. Bill spent the next while violently retching into a plastic bag. The reason for the upheaval of bolus and digestive juices was the gut-turning smell he had endured for as long as 45 minutes now. The reason for doing it into a plastic bag was that Bill knew enough about street-life that good food was not to be wasted. Even semi-digested good food. And even semi-digested good food that was once rotten fruit.

Bill delivered the thermos to the pre-determined place at the pre-determined time and slipped off into the street where he would look for a pigeon or discarded pair of socks to eat for dinner. How he longed for the company of a normal hobo-smelling friend. Not a friend who smells hobos, but a friend who smells of hobos. Until then, there was eating to be done.

Bill waited and waited for the test results back. One night as he settled down in front of the TV display at Hock ‘n’ Ho’s to watch the News whilst enjoying a bottle of sweat that he had collected during the day, Bill sensed something familiar and lacking in his life. Bill felt confused. Memories didn’t usually cause him to cry, but here he was, crying like a molested boy scout.

It wasn’t for some minutes that Bill realized the tears in his eyes were caused by a foul odour and not nostalgia. Bill sniffed himself – nothing unusual, standard hobo smell. He remembered something a wise toucan had once said and decided to follow his nose. His nose led him to a dumpster in a dark alley off the main drag. A dumpster in a dark alley is not unusual, but the stink sure was. Bill lifted the lid of the dumpster and peered in. His eyes rolled back in the wave of energy released from the depository and Bill blacked out.

Bill came to some time later and looked up to see his dear friend Mullac standing over him. “Bill, Bill are you alright?” came the cry from Mullac’s mouth. Bill rolled over and released a hot stream of vomit from his mouth. Once it had stopped he cursed himself for not catching any of it for later. It was hardly his fault however. The smell being propelled forward like word-powered missiles was unbearable. Bill looked up and said “Yeah everything’s good now that you’re here. Did you see it, that horrible thing that done attacked me?”
“Bill, relax. You opened the dumpster that I was defecating in and then you passed out. It was me in the dumpster, not a monster.”

Mullac walked Bill to his double Kelvinator Icemaster-box house with its broken bottle pathway. Bill invited Mullac in for some coffee but once inside Bill said, “Ah, I’m sorry Mullac, I’ve got no coffee but I do have a pre-loved tea bag. Is tea alright?” Mullac thought about it for a while then replied, “Yeah sure Bill. Why not?” Bill got out two soft drink cans that he had cut in half for use as cups and an empty baked beans tin. He stepped out through the main entrance (the one emblazoned with the proud Bill’s family motto – “Fragile - This Side Up”) and filled the tin with some water from the gutter. He then produced a cigarette lighter, which he lit under the can in his hand and heated the water as best he could. Mullac and Bill settled down with their cold, tea-stained but flavourless water and had a chat. After discussing the pleasures of finding new and ‘unused’ blue magazines for some time, the pair parted – Bill to the rear box of his abode and Mullac to wherever it is that repugnant students go.

In the morning Bill found a letter and parcel from NIRP-QuaNaM (they always knew how to reach him) and as he read the letter he became very disturbed, for the letter read:






Bill On His Own
Cardboard Box
Local Area Park

Dear Bill,
The technicians from Paranormal Body Odours have performed a number of tests on the noxious sample you sent us. It was discovered to be a highly concentrated dose of Basilius repugnus. The team would like to bring your friend in for further testing at the downtown Laboratory. We cannot express enough to you that the substance is harmless. Please aid us in the transport of the carrier by tranquilizing him and putting him in a cryo-case (to be supplied) for pick up at 15:00 on the day of receipt of this letter.
Make no attempt at physical contact or proximity with the technicians. We would however like you to accompany your friend to the facility – for his comfort, of course. A separate toxic transport unit will arrive to pick you up from the Town Dump, at which point we ask that you lock yourself into the back of the van.
Thank you Bill for sending this remarkable, and yet perfectly safe, specimen to us. The field of chemical warfare odour elimination will be forever in your debt. Should the strain be new, it will be named Basilius williamsii in your honour.

Your friend,

Dr R.S. Meller
Director of External and Body Odours
NIRP-QuaNaM


Bill looked down at his wrist, where the remnants of a cheap watch were taped. It said 13:37. This of course was insignificant, since the watch was a discarded ‘Time-master’ model that he had spotted in the handbag of an old lady who he had noticed lying at his feet shortly after swinging his fist in a broad arc to gain her attention. The face of the clock itself had not worked for some years, since he had smashed the glass and removed the hands (which happen to make excellent toothpicks, boil lances and ‘roid removers). Nonetheless, it had kept pretty good time since he had begun penciling in the hands every time he espied the town clocktower.

Bill opened the small box and found it contained a small air pistol and some harmless looking darts labeled ‘Equi-nap’. Odd name for a human sleeping aid, Bill thought, and loaded one in. It was almost fruit time, and so Bill headed off to the daily rendezvous point with the pistol tucked under his cat skin muff. The anticipation of finally and conclusively ridding his friend of the abominable stench that ensured the two could only enjoy each other’s company for a short time – and at a short distance – was overwhelming.

Mullac was somewhat aloof that day, and Bill wondered if he hadn’t caught wind of the plot somehow. He shook the thought off, assuring himself that any wind passing by Mullac would be far to heavily infused with stench particles to support the carriage of any rumours. He asked Mullac what was troubling him. Mullac began to explain that he had dropped his favourite nudie playing card in the public toilet he was using and could not bring himself to reach in and grab it.

Pangs of remorse shot through Bill. He did the only thing that reason told him would remove the guilt – he pulled out the pistol and shot a dart of the horse tranquilizer into Mullac’s throat. Mullac protested by dropping off the bench and convulsing a few times before falling into a deep sleep. What happened next made Bill regret his action immediately. Apparently the tranquilizer acted very thoroughly, and its actions included the loosening of the slumbering oaf’s bowel. A steady bellow of flatus burst from Mullac’s pants before settling in a heavy, sickening cloud around both himself and Bill. Bill began to purge his rotten fruit all over the sleeping man, and only adrenalin fuelled his urgent reach for the plastic bag that the fruit had come in.

Having recovered from the biliousness, Bill pocketed the bag o’ muck and set to retrieve the cryo-case. Not far from where he had just enjoyed the rotten fruit (for the first time), Bill had ingeniously concealed the coffin-like structure beneath a feather he had been fortunate enough to find on the ‘chicken’ he had chased for breakfast. He had been lucky enough to just grasp the tail feathers of his quarry as it flew from the statue of a man Bill reverently named ‘Rock Man’.

Bill placed the feather in his pocket and lugged the cryo-case over to Mullac’s body. He lifted the unconscious man into the box, being especially careful not to squeeze the abdomen, for fear of another release of nauseating gas. Once his friend was inside the case, Bill sealed it and activated the freezing mechanism. Mullac would be flash-frozen for his trip to the downtown Laboratory.

Bill deposited the cryo-case at the NIRP-QuaNaM’s Director’s ordained pick up point and walked to his meeting place at the tip. Bill was extremely excited as he waited for his transport. Soon he would invite Mullac to share his box with him and the two could live together just like a real family, just as Bill had once done before he had tragically changed his surname to ‘On His Own’. Once Mullac accepted his invitation, Bill would change his name to Bill With A Housemate. He would labour away at his cooking can and lighter and prepare Mullac gourmet meals of ‘Caesar Mixed Leaf and Grass Salad’, ‘Rat Tart’, ‘Fried Sock’ and his piece de triomphe – ‘Piece Of Meat On Newspaper’ with a side of ‘Not-Rotten Restaurant Discards’. Oh, how he wanted to show Mullac his prowess in preparing hobo cuisine, and wow him with his skill in lizard trapping and glove-finger cutting.

Around that time, just as Bill was performing an intricate charade of lizard trapping to the traffic passing by the tip, a large van pulled up at the sidewalk and stopped beside Bill. The driver motioned to Bill to get in the back. Bill obediently ambled to the rear of the vehicle and climbed in, after adjusting his glasses frames in the reflection of the rear window. The door slammed shut automatically and the van tore off towards the downtown Laboratory.

Bill felt the car come to a stop after a short drive, and heard the door unlock itself. He climbed out of the back of the car and took in his surroundings. He found himself looking around a large, white-walled laboratory equipped with an operating table and countless surgical tools. Well, in reality there were 142 surgical tools, but for all Bill knew there was millions. I suppose it’s fair to say that millions can in fact be counted, but to Bill – they were countless.

After adjusting his eyes to the bright lights of the laboratory, Bill noticed for the first time that lying on the operating table was his dear Mullac. He gasped and rushed to check that nothing untoward was being done to his friend. After a short examination, he decided that Mullac was fine. Bill then heard another sound of an unlocking door. He turned to see three men enter the room. At first he thought they were astronauts, but soon realized that these were technicians from NIRP-QuaNaM in their Biohazard suits. The helmets of which did indeed resemble the spacesuits Bill had seen on the children’s underwear that he had stolen for use as a hat.

The technicians approached the table, and Bill, with some caution. They held their hands palm forwards as if to show Bill that they were unarmed and they walked very slowly so as to make a run for it if he should start. The first one to arrive by the table introduced himself as Senior Technician and told Bill that he was about to undertake a crash course in Stink Extraction, Handling and Storage. Bill looked puzzled and asked, “But Senior, why would I need to know such things? I already gave you the sample, Director Meller told me I was here for moral support for my pal here.” The man who Bill called Senior explained that it had been deemed unnecessary for three technicians to carry out this work, when one civilian could handle it perfectly on his own. Bill reckoned to himself that this was a perfectly logical rationale for the NIRP-QuaNaM to employ and resigned himself to the fact that he was going to spend another excruciating hour collecting stench particles off his friend’s body.

After the quick breakdown on how to use the equipment, Bill was feeling better. They had offered him a cotton handkerchief to cover his nose and introduced him to the tool he would be using to extract the smell. It was much like a vacuum cleaner except that it filled small canisters which Bill was to detach and seal, then place on a trolley. Once the trolley was full, Bill and Mullac were free to go.

Bill reveled in his task, imagining whilst he worked that he was the cleaner of a house that belonged to someone very famous, perhaps David Hasselhoff, or no, better yet – Tori Spelling. He whisked his extraction tool over Mullac’s body with ever-growing confidence and expertise, filling up canisters at a rate he had not foreseen. He fantasized about having a conversation with his boss at his imaginary workplace.
“Oh, yes Miss Spelling ma’am, you look magnificent. Would you like me to vacuum your dress? No? Yes ma’am. Yes I’ll mind my business and stop staring. Of course I can shut up. I’ll just be over here if you need something vacuumed.”
Bill paused from his vacuuming for a moment to enjoy a hearty laugh to himself. He hoped that one day he would get to use a real vacuum cleaner in a real famous person’s house.

Before long the trolley was full and Bill was actually a bit disappointed. He had thoroughly enjoyed the experience and secretly hoped that it would not end so quickly. He turned off his extraction tool and discreetly pocketed the hanky. Then he pushed the trolley over to the door and pressed a red button on its frame, just as he had been shown how. The doors opened and the three technicians that he had met earlier rushed in and pushed away the trolley. Only Senior stayed behind to talk to Bill.

“Bill, you’ve done a fine job, and your country thanks you for it. Now I need you to go over to your friend and take a nice long whiff of his body. We need to know that we got the entire colony of stink.”
“Certainly Senior. And if any remains, I’d be happy to go over him again with that wonderful contraption. You know, whilst I worked I pretended I was…” Senior raised his hand to indicate to Bill that his story was both pathetic and extremely boring.
“Right then, I’ll just go over and have a sniff then, eh?” said Bill, and then he did just that.

Moments later, Bill was relieved to find that his friend Mullac was completely normal smelling. In fact he smelt like a new born baby, or a new born baby who had been cleaned of all its afterbirth and had not yet urinated or gushed out diarrhea yet. Bill was delighted and gave what he imagined to be a triumphant spin of glee. The truth is it was a little bit effeminate, but no one but Senior was around to notice. He motioned to Senior to come over and take a whiff.

Senior arrived at the table and produced a small tool. It reminded Bill of a Geiger counter, which he had seen used in one of the demolished buildings that NIRP-QuaNaM used to send him into. He had never understood why they needed him to look for squirrels in there, but he did it for his old friend Director Meller and received an actual cooked squirrel every time.

Senior waved the instrument over Mullac and examined the readout on the digital display. Apparently he was satisfied that Mullac was stench free, as he then took off his helmet. After a few breaths drawn through the mouth, Senior took a long draught of air in through his nose and exhaled heavily. A grin crept across his face and he reached down to his belt to retrieve a walkie-talkie into which he said, “Subject clean, specimen fully extracted. Ready for re-integration.” He replaced the walkie-talkie and spoke to Bill. “Bill, your friend is free from his foul smell. You managed to extract the whole lot from him, and we are confident it is safe for him to return home now. Please wheel him over to the van and place him and yourself in the back. It’s time for you to go home now.”

About half an hour later Bill was back at his house of boxes and nursing Mullac back to consciousness. Once Mullac was awake, they shared a cup of Bill’s famous coffee-granule in water. Mullac was obviously unaware of what had happened to him since he had been unconscious the whole time and so he asked Bill, “Bill what happened to me? My head is killing me and there is a dart sticking out of my throat. The last thing I remember was the apple remnant I was eating.”
“Oh, yeah. Well a rock fell out of the sky and hit you on the head. As I was carrying you back here, a stray dart came out of the fountain and lodged in your neck. I’ve been too busy getting your wake-up coffee ready to remove it. Yep, just like that. Well, I suppose that solves the mystery of the dart in your throat. Let’s never speak of it again.”
“Oh. Okay then.”

Bill and Mullac never did discuss the dart again, and enjoyed a happy life living in the park together for two whole winters. Bill taught Mullac all his recipes and was surprised to find that Mullac even developed a few of his own; one of which, dubbed by Mullac ‘Stolen Hamburger’, Bill was loathe to admit was even tastier than his own ‘Piece of Meat on Newspaper’. Bill showed Mullac all the places where he could find clothes just hanging out to take, and explained to Mullac the stupidity of the people who live right near these lines of clothes yet never think to wear them themselves.

The second winter was uncharacteristically cold that year, and live food was harder to come by than usual. One day, after not eating good meat for weeks, Mullac had discovered and snared a small creature in a pram near a young woman who was sitting in the park. Mullac was so happy to find this fat little morsel that he took off across the park. His suspicion that it was delicious was confirmed moments later when the screaming woman (who had clearly been eyeing it for herself) set after him with a police officer close behind. Such was a sign of the rough times that even a policeman needed to forage in the park. Mullac heard the policeman make a remark about the extreme cold and then heard two explosions which coincided with the two large holes appearing in his chest. The large holes soon disappeared from his vision though, once Mullac lay on the path and shut his eyes. It was then that Mullac developed what Bill supposed was ‘death’, a condition from which he never discovered.

Bill cursed and swore at the tree near his box for weeks after the incident, for he had lost his best and only friend and the meal he had just caught. By a cruel twist of fate, Bill had never learnt the recipe to ‘Stolen Hamburgers’ and the secret died with Mullac. Bill never again had a friend, and he never wanted another – certainly now that he knew the pain of losing one that he had given his all to save and lost it all too soon after. It was an investment of time and love that Bill could simply not afford to commit to again.

Bill survived several more winters before he himself contracted ‘death’. His case had come up in slightly different circumstances however. Bill had been sleeping in his comfy rear box with its rag bed, when a curious pack of wild dogs had entered. The sound of their snarling and the sensation of their teeth tearing through the flesh on his legs had woken him, but it was too late. Before he could reach his hitting stick, one of the canine devils had set upon his throat with vampiric bloodlust running through its cursed veins. Bill lay back at this point and allowed the dogs to feast on his weathered flesh; knowing that the pain would subside once most of the blood had run from his body and he had passed into unconsciousness. Bill would never recover from the illness known only as ‘Eaten Alive By Dogs’. The next day wind took away his box and some passing hobos collected his meagre belongings.

Some folks in this world are just not meant to be social creatures. Of course, dogs will always pack but Bill, it seems, was destined to remain forever – On His Own.





DISCLAIMER:
All characters, places and smells are completely fictional and are the product of the peerless imagination of the author. Any likeness to a real person, place or smell are purely coincidental. The author apologizes for any distress caused by this story but does not make apologies for any real smell you may encounter.